Uranus in the First Decan of Gemini — Insights from Ancient Egyptian Magic

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today, we're going to take a look at the first decan of Gemini. We're going to talk about the timeline that Uranus is on, moving through these first 10 degrees of Gemini, and the story that's contained in these first degrees, as well as the other two sets of 10 degrees that constitute the sign of Gemini.

The reason that it's important to do this is, first of all, the decans are a very ancient way of tracking planetary movements and developments through 10 degree segments of the zodiac. We'll talk a little bit about that historically, just to provide some context today. But then we want to look at what story is being told during the time period in which Uranus is going to be in Gemini, because it provides a lot of depth and detail, I think. And plus, when you have a story, I think it's easier to think about a planet moving through a sign when there are storylines available.

This year, I'm teaching a Master Class series on the Decan, so it has been more fresh on my mind. I'll tell you more about how you can locate that if you're interested. But we're going to tell you a little bit about what the decans are, and a little bit about this first decan of Gemini today. So that's our agenda.

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Anyway, so let's talk. First and foremost, let's pull up niche episode, and let's talk about where we're at with this Uranus transit to begin. By the way, I'm an affiliate, so you can find the link to get a nice discount on the chap. So if you want to check out this cutting edge astrology software, you can find that in the comments or pinned to the top of the comments or in the description.

So we are here on Monday, May 4, and Uranus has been in Gemini for about a week now. And what I want to do is take you through, first of all, the timeline. So Uranus will be in that first decan of Gemini from right now, 2026, and it's going to spend a couple of years here. So we'll get moving into the 10th decan. I can kind of see it's like gradually moving through the first 10 degrees. A decan is 10 degrees. It moves into the second decan in June of 2028, about two years from now. And then it will spend a lot of time, another two years or plus, in the second decan, and then we're going to see it move into the third decan by about September of 2030, and so on like that.

So we have the next couple of years with Uranus in that first decade of Gemini. If you don't know what the decans are, first I'm going to tell you about what they are. Then I'm going to tell you about this first decan, and then I'm going to give you a list of five things to watch for. An easy way to apply today's talk is to look at the whole sign house of Gemini in your birth chart. Consider the topics of the horoscopes we've been looking at for you on the channel, and then think to yourself, any of these five things to watch for are part of a story arc that will be playing out in that area of my chart, that area of my life, for the next few years.

So at least between now and 2028, the story arc in this space of Gemini is going to look like the way we're describing it today. So keep that in mind. First of all, what are the decans? Well, they originate in Egypt. They are like star clocks. They're a part of timekeeping in ancient Egypt. They originate, as far as we know, maybe up to 4000 years ago. They were originally 36 star groups, or asterisms, that rose consecutively on the horizon.

These are groupings of stars that move along the ecliptic, meaning the solar year, and that rise consecutively on the eastern horizon. Every decan marks roughly 10 days of the solar year in an idealized 360 day Egyptian calendar year, and they were mostly used as night clocks to track which star was rising, to tell time at night. But they also had magical incantational powers and symbolic relevance and meaning originally, though you could think of them as part of timekeeping in the most basic sense.

Now when Egyptian astrology and decanic magic, the practice of magical rites and rituals associated with the different decans, meets Greek astrology, ancient Hellenistic astrology, that's in the first millennium BCE, the decans are projected onto the zodiac. So each 30 degree zodiac sign was divided into three sections, preserving this 36 decanic structure.

Now, in early texts, the decans are mentioned, but somewhat minimized, like they're not a huge component of what we see in the earliest texts, but they are there nonetheless, and are part of our earliest tradition. But they're grafted on from an earlier Egyptian practice. In Hellenistic and even later Arabic astrology, the decans became associated with images, spirits, guardians, talismanic powers. Obviously, this is coming from an animistic cosmic framework.

The Picatrix is a very famous ancient text that uses the images or associates them in use of ritual magic, meditation, cosmic, demonic mediation, understanding the quality of time, and they come to be called faces, faces of time, where every 10 degree segment of the zodiac, hence the solar year, has a distinct image, mood and power. Now, astrologers began assigning planetary rulers to each decan, and these were often based on the triplicity rulers through the elemental system.

If you don't know about triplicity rulers, that's part of what we study in our programs. Or later, there was a Chaldean order system. That's the one that's probably most popular. I certainly use it and am using it in my masterclass series. Anyway, the planets are thought to match or pair with the influence or magical qualities of the decan. And then, obviously, as the tradition goes on, each decan comes to be linked with one of the Minor Arcana Tarot cards.

So you have systems like the Golden Dawn, if you ever heard of the Golden Dawn before, that integrate things like astrology, Tarot and planetary magic, and the decans become a significant part of that system. But today, astrologers often use the decans to help enhance storytelling in the zodiac or to refine transit study like what we're doing today. It gives archetypal depth in the same way that you might add in things like asteroids, fixed stars, lots, Sabian symbols and other things.

Okay, so with that being said, I want to introduce you to the storyline of Gemini. Oh, one more thing that I want to say is that one way of thinking about the decans, because there's three decans in each sign, three 10 degree segments for each 30 degrees of the zodiac, the decans tend to move in three part stages or processes like a three act play. The first decan of every sign is usually kind of an opening act where the emerging qualities of the sign, which are always related to the planetary host (in the case of Gemini, that's Mercury), it's like Act One.

Decan one that we're talking about today is the opening act, and it's a very mercurial, double-bodied air sign kind of act. Decan two usually has to do with the qualities of the sign and planet trying to socialize, externalize, stabilize and reach some kind of a space of solidification, karmically. And then the final decan usually has to do with testing or refining challenges or deconstruction or integration. It's like the closing act.

All three decans typically tell the story along the lines of the planet that rules the sign. But then the decans with sub-planets, the sub-planetary rulers of each decan, will refine and tell the story of the sign through their lens. It's really fun to learn, and like I said, it has been the subject of our master class this year. I've actually mapped onto the decans for the purpose of my master class hexagrams, and I'm going to show you one today.

So let's go ahead and talk about the first decan of Gemini, and then I'm going to give you a list of five things to watch for given the next two years of Uranus being in this first decan. First of all, think about the decans of Gemini through the lens of Hermes Mercury, airy, double-bodied Hermes Mercury, and initiating in the first decan this story of mercurial learning and curiosity. And this is a decan that's ruled by Jupiter.

So we have this rapid sort of expansion, like a busy, busy beehive, or like being slightly, you know, someone being like overly caffeinated. So there's a busy mindedness and a rapid expansion of mental energies, the learning of new languages. Many roads sort of opening at once. Roads being roads and traffic systems, you know, pathways like in the nervous system, all being very mercurial.

Many roads are opening up. There's radical, fast moving, expansive diversification of thought, insights, disruption to information systems or flows, intellectual awakening, new languages, new networks, even new epistemologies, ways of understanding truth or talking about truth itself. Philosophical expansion, very rapid. Doesn't always feel like it's as organized. It's very pure, spontaneous, inspired, rapid mental energy.

So that could be technological, it could be epistemological or philosophical. It could be taking place in markets. It could take place in terms of people coming and going out of your life. But there's a sense of the mind sort of awakening, branching, connecting, proliferating all simultaneously. Again, think like cross pollinators in spring, or think of a busy beehive.

Now, the first decan is also associated with a Tarot card. And I want to talk about this Tarot card, which is the eight of swords. If you've ever seen this Tarot card image before, it looks a little crazy. Like you look at this and you think, ooh, that doesn't look good. Remember that Jupiter, the ruler of this first decan in the Chaldean order system (in case you know the system I'm referring to), that Jupiter rulership of this first 10 degrees of Gemini is kind of nicely depicted here, actually, when you think about the potential to get paralysis by analysis, or over analysis, or a kind of mental stuckness through too many things coming on too quickly, or almost like thought loops that bind you, or when thoughts come on so quickly that there's an intuitive dimension to it.

One of the things we talk about with Hermes all the time that I appreciate is the mental, rational mind, because that is very much the character of Hermes. What we don't always talk about is that the natural opposite of Jupiter pairs together in subtle ways with Mercury Hermes. I mean, planets are opposites, but that doesn't mean that they don't share anything in common. They often are secret versions of each other.

So for example, have you ever sat with someone who is dogmatically open minded? Or have you ever sat with someone who is intuitively rational? Intuitive rationals are people who might everything may appear in language that is very mental, intellectual and rational, but it's actually all streaming from a very intuitive place. This card represents the potential shadows of a great surge of mental energy that makes us feel stuck in the busyness, the multiplicity, overwhelmed, anxious, fragmented.

On the other hand, this is a card that could show exactly what Uranus helps a person stuck in bondage among the swords with, which is sort of shocking the system out of some kind of mental cage that it's been in. So you have a variety of different ways of thinking about this card in relation to the first decan, which shows us this massive surge of mental, intellectual energy. But it makes a point to ask us: are we being intuitive? Are we getting locked up because of overstimulation? And then are we being broken? Is there a potential to be broken out of some bind that we're in because of greater mental freedom?

This is a decan, I should say, that is all about that very rapid sense of learning and mental excitement. I think, for example, when I first started learning astrology, this is why I've been saying for a long time now that Uranus in Gemini is one of perhaps the best transits for learning astrology. You've got Uranus, this groundbreaking, paradigm-shattering planet, moving into the sign of Hermes, the patron saint of astrology itself.

So when astrology becomes a paradigm breaker and it suddenly and rapidly develops our understanding of reality, and there's an intuitive but also logical way, we're starting to work with patterns and insights about ourselves and others that can really break us out of a limited place of understanding. That's what's so exciting about it. At the same time, when you're rapidly learning new things, the beginner's mind is easy to lose because you start getting proud and confident because of how excited you are to be learning. Suddenly I might know more than I used to, so that makes me better than I used to. It probably makes me better than people who don't know more, you know.

So there's a lot coming in: the influx of energy, mentally, intellectually, different ways of knowing and perceiving, and the potential of being somewhat blinded by it. That's there in the eight of this decan. The hexagram that I mapped myself onto this, creatively, obviously, is hexagram 15, which is called modesty. And let me just read you something from Benebell Wen's text on hexagram 15. I'm going to read you the oracle text, and it's called modesty.

"If you must boast to receive honors, then no one will truly see you as honorable. Nothing is more honorable than decency. Show temperance in your conduct, temperance in your speech and moderation in all that you do. There is no need for assuming airs of dignity or self-importance. Do not exaggerate. When you strive to be indistinguishable, you become the most distinguishable beyond the merits of virtue. You've unwittingly provoked the evil eye of envy, and sometime someone feels threatened by you, and this person wields power. Give no one any reason to act against you. Allow no merit to the adverse adversary's claims. There is a mountain within the earth. The sage takes away where there is excess and adds where there is shortage. Ensure temperance and fair distribution. Modesty will help you achieve success in your endeavor. What is most important for you to follow through. Initiating is not the challenge. Completion is the obstacle. The sage will meet with a favorable outcome."

Now that text speaks to the potential for excessiveness of something to undermine us. And the reason that I use that for this initial decan of Gemini is because the shadow of this decan plays nicely into the advice of this hexagram. The shadow of this decan is excessive mental energy, excessive talking, overstimulation of the nervous system, over-eagerness, a lot of excitement that's grounded in something real, but that acts too quickly and impulsively.

This hexagram is very much about keeping a beginner's mind and what amazing, rapid, exciting inventions, developments, changes of perception or mental awareness that can happen here. But the advice when so much excitement is burgeoning in a Jupiter-ruled sign (and remember Jupiter is in its detriment in Gemini) would be to keep a level head. Excitement and even keeledness can go together. In my book, there's no reason that getting really excited and experiencing lots of rapid, mental, intellectual, even entrepreneurial and work or business based changes and growth all can happen very quickly in a Mercury world sign.

But it's a breakthrough that needs temperance, and it's a breakthrough that needs discernment and restraint, because it can easily tip over into a kind of exaggerated, overly activated nervous response or mental response. So modesty becomes a survival strategy in an age of information overload. That's the way that I'm framing this.

Now within the subsequent decans, we have a story that plays out. Decan two becomes very much about sharpening and solidifying the things that were developed in the first so that they have staying power. So if you think about learning astrology in the first decan: the explosion, the excitement, the enthusiasm, listening to a million different lectures, getting excited. Decan two is going to be like, I need a system. I need a structure. I need a lineage. I need some way of sorting through all the different voices and potential conflicts and debates and kind of figuring out where I stand and what can last as a learning structure.

Or you could say it's like studying religion and philosophy, and within the process, kind of picking a focus or finding, even perhaps, where your own beliefs lie. The second decan is going to take us from the introduction of a lot of new things into refining and solidifying something from what came out that was new. That's a basic way of looking at decan two.

Decan three is going to take us into real integration and wisdom. Or if the process has been faulty, then there might be something that has to fall apart, something that wasn't built on a firm enough structure or foundation that we let go of because we weren't able to carry through because we didn't do the work of temperance, do the work of refinement and solidification, and do the work of integration into an actual, lived, embodied form of wisdom or intelligence. So these are just little, brief ways of looking at the decans of Gemini.

Now I'm going to give you a list of five things to watch for, given Uranus in Gemini over the next two years in this first decan. The first thing to watch for is going to be shifts in communication. Let's call them ecosystems. That means that where there may be new platforms or new technology or new paradigms of communication, and the potential for rapid decentralization or fragmentation of different information channels, you're going to see that new platforms, new technologies, new paradigms of communication or thought or learning are going to come in and replace outdated models very, very quickly.

However, there may be multiple things coming in at the same time to replace something old, and there has to be some discernment and patience and temperance for transitions that are being made. Transitions of thought, of technology, of mind, of market, of media. We have to be thoughtful about how we midwife a process of change because of how rapidly it is likely to occur.

Number two would be cognitive overload. Now I mentioned this, or I alluded to this when talking about the first decan already, but the potential for simultaneous rise in anxiety and creative excitement, or even creative genius, is there. By creative genius, I mean the feeling that something, a spirit within you, is leading you to new insights, new ideas, breakthroughs personally. And at the exact same time, these breakthroughs can be destabilizing, mentally, emotionally, cognitively.

So the potential to oscillate between overload and breakthrough, breakthrough that creates mental and emotional nervous system stress, oscillating between things like confusion and clarity, as our bodies are having to integrate fast movements of cognitive changes. That's a lot, you know? It's a lot to deal with. So the insight will be there. The new thoughts, the new awakenings of insight are going to come. They're going to be very exciting. We have to be so careful that we're also watching for the potential increase of things like anxiety or dysregulation.

Number three would be the collapse of intellectual authority. Now by that, I mean the voices in our head and the inner frameworks, paradigms, belief structures, the things we think we know to be true, or the people that we've invested or projected a lot of authority onto. Maybe they've served a purpose in our lives for a period of time. It's not anything broken necessarily about us or anyone else, but it could be that where we have placed a certain amount of trust or power, or we've given a lot of credence to someone and been like, "I listen to what they say," or "I listen to what this form of wisdom says," or "I listen to what this group has to say" — where we find ideological truth telling, intellectual or spiritual authority could change or collapse.

So what an expert means to us, or what we think of as our own expertise, could change significantly. We may gradually become experts in a slightly different way within our fields, or we may find that we're listening to different kinds of experts on different kinds of subjects, or maybe even flip-flopping in terms of, well, I never used to listen to that kind of person, but now I do. The point is that there's a pluralism of intellectual authority that is likely to rise, whereas single authorities are likely to disperse.

On the other hand, it can flip flop. If you're someone who has had a vast network of different ideas constellating, you may find that you're needing more organizational focus in who you listen to and why. But either way, you see how it's about systemic change with respect to where we find intellectual, spiritual or ideological authority in ourselves or outside of ourselves.

Number four is the need for discernment. Now, signals are going to increase in their spontaneity, their rapidness, their mind-blowing quality. Signs and omens that pop up: Uranus in Gemini is great for things like divination, because you're going to be so much more aware of the random firing of the collective cosmic nervous system and its showing of signs. Omens are probably going to step up dramatically for those people who pay attention. The reason for that is not because there's actually more or less signaling. There's more awareness of the signaling in a sign that is all about hermeneutics, meaning the interpretation of signs and omens — why astrology belongs to Hermes again.

So if our hermeneutic abilities are stepping up, that means our ability to read signs and omens is there. But guess what? Reality is always speaking. Our ability to see more doesn't necessarily mean that we are discerning wisely. It's like just because you can hear more noises in the space of reality doesn't mean you may not still have to filter static and find signal. Who filters this to get us to the signal? What is the process by means of which we find signal and sort it out from static?

This is part of what's going to be happening while Uranus is in Gemini, especially in this first 10 degrees where there's a burst of information, but it's relatively new and unformed. The spiritual intellectual practice may be about subtraction sometimes. I mean, I've said this already, but Uranus in Gemini can be very existential and very Socratic, emptying certainty rather than inflating it. The intellectual spiritual practice may be about subtracting more things off our mental and spiritual programs than adding more. That's very possible, because the need for discernment often steps up when the feeling of overwhelm increases mentally.

Number five would be new languages and release from mental prisons: inherited narratives, belief systems, linguistic constraints, breaking out of them, new forms of self-imposed, let's call it mental fragmentation. Sometimes we resist truth like that. There is a truth because we think that to embrace the idea of a truth would mean to reject the possibility of multiplicity. But that's a false binary. There can be truth in a situation, in a moment, within relationships.

All of us know this: there is a way absolute. It's like it's time to apologize, you know, or like I messed up and hurt someone's feelings and I need to take accountability for it. That does not cancel out the potential for there to have been multiple different perspectives present in the situation. True truth, let's say in a sort of absolute sense, doesn't cancel out truth in a more relativistic sense. In fact, the more dogmatic we get about relativism, the more absolute it becomes.

We say, "Oh, everything's relative." Well, there are no absolutes. I mean, this is like a philosophy dilemma 1010. Are you sure there are no absolutes? How absolutely sure are you? I'm absolutely sure. Okay, well, there we have our absolutes, you know. So the point is that absolutism and relativism are going to be in this very fluid dialog where you can't just reject the nature of truth, truth, capital T, but there's also small t truth. And you can't reject absolute relativism with a capital R, and you can't reject minor relativism with a lowercase r. I think you're able to follow this. I really don't think it's that complicated.

The idea of Uranus in this first decan is that the ability to get out of mental prisons of narrowness exists, and that's the great potential here. But that potential also comes with the potential for stepping into a brand new one that we're not aware of because of how naive and innocent the introduction of new ideas can be. They can imprison us as soon as they come in, because we get too rigid about something we're excited about.

Anyway, that's it for today. I hope that this was a valuable exploration of the first decan of Gemini. I thought it would be a good way of doing things. I'm going to show you what's on my altar. Let's make sure we do that, and then we'll be off. All right, let me show you. Oh no, there we go.

So you can see on my altar, actually you can kind of there it is on the floor. I have a picture of my family right below the altar space. Couldn't set it on there because it's a little bit too big. But the reason that I set that there is that my wife and girls are on a special pilgrimage that they've taken to Italy, and they're visiting sites of ancient goddesses and sacred feminine goddess rituals. It's a whole thing, and I'm not describing it very well, but it's with the teacher that she has been following for a long time. Her family, her side of the family is all Italian, so this is really exciting for her. But I'm praying for them that they are kept safe and sound while they're traveling.

So they're in front of my altar this week as I'm flying solo in the house. It's like on the first day or two, I was like, "Oh, this is really nice. I have all the space, and there's just a lot more freedom to do things exactly as I want to do with my work." And then by day three, I'm kind of a wreck. So anyway, you guys can send me a little love too, until they get back. But no, I'm kidding.

Hey, next I'm going to tell you about the year one program. It starts in late June. Early bird's available. It's a fantastic program, so stick around to hear more about it. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.